Author and journalist gives a speech during a peace rally against the Iraqi War in Aspen, Colo., February 2, 2003. Thompson was found dead in his Woody Creek, Colo., home of aself-inflicted gunshot wound to the head said Pitkin County Sheriff Bob Braudis. (AP Photo/The Aspen Times, Paul Conrad) less

Author and journalist gives a speech during a peace rally against the Iraqi War in Aspen, Colo., February 2, 2003. Thompson was found dead in his Woody Creek, Colo., home of aself-inflicted gunshot wound to the ... more

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Co-stars Benicio Del Toro, left, and Johnny Depp, right, join Hunter Thompson, center, author of the classic pop culture novel "Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas," at the premier of the film adaptation of Thompson's book Tuesday May 19, 1998, in New York. Directed by Terry Gilliam, the film stars Depp as journalist Raoul Duke and Del Toro as Dr. Gonzo, Duke's partner in high living. (AP Photo/Kathy Willens) less

Co-stars Benicio Del Toro, left, and Johnny Depp, right, join Hunter Thompson, center, author of the classic pop culture novel "Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas," at the premier of the film adaptation of ... more

Photo: KATHY WILLENS

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Private security guards stand at the driveway to the home of Hunter S. Thompson, Monday, Feb. 21, 2005, near the tiny hamlet of Woody Creek, Colo. Thompson died of an apparent self-inflicted gunshot wound in the home on Sunday, Feb. 20. (AP Photo/David Zalubowski) less

Private security guards stand at the driveway to the home of Hunter S. Thompson, Monday, Feb. 21, 2005, near the tiny hamlet of Woody Creek, Colo. Thompson died of an apparent self-inflicted gunshot wound in ... more

Photo: DAVID ZALUBOWSKI

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Thompson's career was more than just a party / His gonzo legacy began with writing, transcended persona

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If gonzo journalist Hunter S. Thompson were around to hear the encomiums heaped on him Monday by the cream of America's journalism academies, he might well blush, have another shot of Wild Turkey, and then let loose with a weird and scatological screed decrying the kind of establishment wisdom he made a colorful career out of lampooning.

Thompson, who was 67, died in his Rocky Mountain home Sunday of an apparently self-inflicted gunshot wound, according to the sheriff of Pitkin County, Colo.

Over the past three-plus decades, Thompson carved out a unique name -- in truth, it was a persona -- as an outspoken writer who broke the rules of the so-called no-rules New Journalism by not only writing the story, but also by injecting himself so much into the narrative that he became the story. Thompson with the Hells Angels. Thompson in Las Vegas, stoned beyond stoned.

However you look at his work -- his magazine pieces for Rolling Stone, his books like "Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas" and others -- Thompson, who has been compared to such fellow iconoclasts as H.L. Mencken and Mark Twain, had a profound impact on how journalism in the United States was practiced in the latter third of the 20th century, according to journalism school deans and fellow journalists.

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Even though many remember Thompson's mordant character and zany behavior as much as his writing, it was the writing that was the key thing, the important thing.

"At the beginning, when we all began to read this incredible stuff, there was this brilliance, and the undeniability of it as a voice with a point of view," said Terry McDonell, managing editor of Sports Illustrated and a friend and editor of Thompson going back 25 years to the days of Rolling Stone and Esquire. "This came directly from the writing."

McDonell said "it was a very popular thing" to say that "maybe he really didn't have the chops, and maybe it was entirely theater. You can make that argument, but you are not remembering the force of that work when it came upon us. In that (presidential) campaign in '72, every news organization had their writing (influenced by Thompson's work). He changed the culture of journalism, writing, everything. People wanted to be like him."

And he leaves a legacy that, some say, will last for a long time.

"There's a place for a Hunter Thompson in the modern scheme of things," said Orville Schell, dean of the Graduate School of Journalism at UC Berkeley. "There's always a place for someone like that." Schell noted dryly that the "news establishment, like any institution, gets encumbered with taboos, rituals, formalities and a lot of pretension."

So in comes Hunter Thompson, Schell said, "and it doesn't hurt a bit to have someone who owes no one anything and is not seeking to curry any favor or avoid any sticky wicket, someone who is just outrageous, who will speak what cannot be said in polite company."

Thompson reveled in that kind of thing, going on writing binges fueled by whatever substance came to hand, taking on the sacred cows and skewering them with sentences he intentionally made dark and weird and riddled with fear and paranoia.

To some, that style simply typed him as a cartoon character.

But Robert Gunnison, who worked for former Sen. George McGovern in his losing presidential bid in 1972, said Thompson, who would later produce "Fear and Loathing on the Campaign Trail," was one of a tiny number of reporters who clearly understood "a tricky parliamentary maneuver the McGovern forces executed at the (Democratic) convention. It was referred to as the South Carolina challenge.

"It escaped most of the national press, but Thompson laid it all out in Rolling Stone, exactly what happened," said Gunnison, who later was a political reporter for The Chronicle and is now director of school affairs at UC Berkeley's journalism school. "It was a brilliant piece of reporting, not the kind of thing he would be noted for. He had a real appreciation for how politics worked."

But that was 30 years ago and on some campuses today, Thompson may be something of an anachronism.

"Is he a hero at Columbia Journalism School?" asked Nicholas Lemann, the school's 50-year-old dean. "Sadly, I think no. He's much more a hero to my generation of journalists. He's sort of a giant, but I don't think rising young journalists are reading him with the same degree of admiration."

Nonetheless, Lemann said, Thompson's legacy can be seen in the fact that he was one of those media stars created by the campaigns, much like author Theodore White, famed for his quadrennial "Making of the President" books. If White was the straightforward traditionalist, Thompson was the "weird, alternative type voice," Lemann said. "That was clearly his slot. And the closest thing to it (today) is the bloggers."

In the larger scheme of things, however, Lemann and others freely compare Thompson to Twain, the 19th century humorist who delighted, as much as did Thompson, in taking potshots at the establishment.

"Thompson was always going against the conventional, in thinking and writing and journalism," said Twain biographer Justin Kaplan. "There was something distinctly and proudly subversive about him, as there was about Mark Twain, and we certainly need people like that."

Kaplan said Thompson "shook up the way journalism is done. He said the Hunter Thompsons of the world are few and far between in today's journalism, a business that "doesn't seem to have a hell of a lot of backbone these days. It's corporate journalism that doesn't encourage this kind of oppositional or satirical writing."

For some, Thompson's body of work is writing that will last.

Thompson "brought to journalism the power of a strong voice and was an important force in shaping what was then called the New Journalism, with a point of view and narrative form that affected journalists of his generation and will be continued to be read by people of our time, much like we continue to read people like Mark Twain," said Geoffrey Cowan, dean of the University of Southern California-Annenberg School for Communication in Los Angeles.

"He created vivid scenes and vivid people," Cowan said, "and (his work) will continue to be assigned by faculty members for years to come, and read widely in anthologies of great reporting."

He will also be remembered, however, for the Hunter Thompson who craved guns, motorcycles, big red convertibles and ingestible substances of most kinds.

"It doesn't surprise me a bit that he took his own life, because that role is a very tough one, the role of the professional iconoclast," said Schell, the UC Berkeley journalism dean. "It's lonely, and it's not a very collegial one, like (being) Galileo or Martin Luther. By all accounts, he was a prickly pear and not a very happy person. It's difficult to always be at odds with everything."

In his own words.

We were somewhere around Barstow on the edge of the desert when the drugs began to take hold. I remember saying something like "I feel a bit lightheaded; maybe you should drive ..." And suddenly there was a terrible roar all around us and the sky was full of what looked like huge bats, all swooping and screeching and diving around the car, which was going about a hundred miles an hour with the top down to Las Vegas. And a voice was screaming: "Holy Jesus! What are these goddamn animals?"

Then it was quiet again. My attorney had taken his shirt off and was pouring beer on his chest, to facilitate the tanning process. "What the hell are you yelling about?" he muttered, staring up at the sun with his eyes closed and covered with wraparound Spanish sunglasses. "Never mind," I said. "It's your turn to drive." I hit the brakes and aimed the Great Red Shark toward the shoulder of the highway. No point mentioning those bats, I thought. The poor bastard will see them soon enough.

From "Fear and Loathing

in Las Vegas".

Work was impossible. The geeks had broken my spirit. They had done too many things wrong. It was never like this for Mencken. He lived like a Prussian gambler -- sweating worse than Bryant on some nights and drunker than Judas on others. It was all a dehumanized nightmare ... and these raddled cretins have the gall to complain about my deadlines.